(This op-ed originally appeared in The Daily on May 20, 2012, under the name ‘Flunking History.’ It is no longer extant, so I am posting it here) In a 2009 foreign policy speech, Mitt Romney used the word “medieval” to deride the aims of jihad. The jihadists, he claimed, intend to drag “the entire world […]
My newest piece for the Reformation 500th anniversary edition of Let’s Talk: Living Theology in the Metropolitan Chicago Synod: And it is in this surviving vernacular literature that we can sense the real import of the Lollard movement. Wycliffe’s translations, unlike later efforts, did not return to Greek or Hebrew, but rendered the Vulgate in […]
(This piece originally appeared in The Daily on July 31, 2011, under the title ‘Other/None Nation.’ It is no longer extant so I am posting it here) In a celebrated early chapter of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick,” the narrator, Ishmael, takes the side of a pagan companion as they go about getting hired for an […]
(This piece originally appeared in The Daily on May 8, 2011. It is no longer extant, so I’m re-posting it here.) The optometrist was very generous in praising our motives, but came back to the question so many people end up asking. “It must be so hard to get attached.” I had decided to start […]
Brutally Ordinary Things 